Summary: Earlier this year, Turbine Studios -- now in the hands of Warner Bros. Interactive -- announced that their fantasy MMORPG Lord of the Rings Online would be following the footsteps of Turbine's <i>other</i> fantasy MMORPG Dungeons and Dragons Online, in going free-to-play. The model would follow that of DDO's very closely, with certain consumable items, cosmetic character adjustments, and a large proportion of the side-questing areas becoming optional extra purchases.Read Full Article

However, the best part has been ignored for far too long. Playing a creep aka a monster and leveling them up is blast. But it needs a lot of work... few play it... balance issues. Being forced to have people help you do anything... when they refuse to help each other... tons of griefing... serious design problems.

Free for ultra casual players who don't mind playing without "premium" content. F2P games rely heavily on players either buying from their online stores or offering subscription fees for extra content.

HELL YES I AM.
As a current player and huge JRR fan I really love how immersive the mmo is (even if you only run into other people once every half hour) I'm thinking the free-to-play will be a good way to bring new faces to Middle-Earth

I will definitely be playing this. Tried of D&D F2P, but wasn't so into it. This sounds a lot more promising for someone like me who can't swing the monthly surcharge...unless DCUO really wows, and then I'll have to reconsider...

What they failed to mention in the article (Imagine that....) is that if your a current subscriber, use to be one, or a beta tester, you actually can start on the 8th, in face that's when its actually going F2P, it just isn't open to the new public til the 10th.

I've been playing LOTRO for about a month now and I must say, it is pretty impressive. Virtually no griefers, everyone is very helpful, there's plenty of content and replay value, you can even make and download songs to play on different instruments! But best of all, by far, is the fact that it stays true the Lord of the Rings books.
Can't wait to reach Moria and Mirkwood, not to mention Rohan, Gondor, and Mordor!

I love this game. It is beautiful, and really focuses on questing, exploration, and PvE. The music is great too. It is not as polished as WoW, as there are elements of the UI that are a little wonky. The AH is frustrating. And PvP is minimal. So if you LOVE PvP, this game is probably not for you.

However, with all that being said, the game is still awesome. They do little things that make this game fun to play. Things like when you get a critical success on crafting a weapon, at a certain tier of crafting, you get to name the weapon. The music system allows you to actually play custom music in game. Whole bands have formed.

The instances are old-school labyrinth-like spaces, with optional bosses and side quests, not the dumbed-down linear instances that WoW went to in the expansions. Also, the game does a realy good job of recreating the "Feel" of the books and to some extent, the movies. That is usually my criticism against LotR games. But not this one.

Those who say there is no content are incorrect. There I plenty of content. And they often add whole new regions in patches (not only in expansions). Proabably the people who dislike the game are the PvPers. I am not. I like epic, engaging PvE. This is where LotRO shines.